Pragmatic deal with 'axis of evil' / North Korean pact after nukes are fact

Michael Zielenziger

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, February 18, 2007

Photo: VIKTOR KOROTAYEV

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-il smiles during a visit to Vladivostok in this August 23, 2002 file photo. South Korean officials on January 26, 2007 denied a report that Kim might be ill or that the military had plotted against him. REUTERS/Viktor Korotayev/Files (RUSSIA) 0 less

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il smiles during a visit to Vladivostok in this August 23, 2002 file photo. South Korean officials on January 26, 2007 denied a report that Kim might be ill or that the military had ... more

Photo: VIKTOR KOROTAYEV

Pragmatic deal with 'axis of evil' / North Korean pact after nukes are fact

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Washington's agreement last week with North Korea to freeze its nuclear program marks a stark reversal on two crucial points for a Bush administration that long insisted it would never dangle material inducements before a nefarious member of the "axis of evil."

First, it marks a willingness by the White House to negotiate directly with Pyongyang, despite the cover of six-party talks originally created to keep such face-to-face meetings from ever taking place.

The deal also signifies an important defeat for hardliners in the Bush administration who favored ideological purity over diplomatic pragmatism. These hawks believed that economic sanctions and other pressure would ultimately force the North Koreans to cave, and that any inducement to the furtive regime of leader Kim Jong Il would represent nothing less than "blackmail."

There is precious little in this new agreement that the White House could not have obtained readily four years ago, when it resolutely refused to hold direct talks with Pyongyang.

This long refusal to negotiate exacted a heavy price: Today the North Koreans have reprocessed enough nuclear material to produce 8 to 10 bombs, have conducted a ballistic missile test and last fall conducted their first test of a working nuclear bomb.

The ascendancy of the pragmatists was signaled in January, when, far off the public radar screen, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, America's chief negotiator on North Korean policy, held a quiet series of face-to-face meetings with his North Korea counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan in Berlin. These meetings marked a major turnaround for the White House. For the first time, a Bush administration negotiator met directly with a representative from Pyongyang, after four years of insisting such talks could only take place within a multilateral setting, with officials of Japan, Russia, China and South Korea included.

The "key concepts" underlying last week's agreement were worked out during the Berlin meeting, South Korea's Ambassador to Washington Lee Tae-sik acknowledged at a conference organized by the Asia Society in San Francisco last week. "This was the backbone of this agreement," he said. Lee also said that had the Bush White House agreed to talk earlier with Pyongyang, "we could have achieved this outcome already."

Under terms of the deal, North Korea will shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor within 60 days and permit international nuclear monitors to return to the country in exchange for a small amount of fuel oil. After the North agrees to "disablement of all existing nuclear facilities," it receives economic, energy and humanitarian assistance equivalent to an additional 950,000 tons of fuel oil, worth an estimated $257 million. The United States, in turn will begin the process of taking North Korea off the list of nations who sponsor terrorism and start talks aimed at restoring diplomatic relations.

Many of the most difficult issues -- like getting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear bombs and agree not to sell its stockpile of nuclear materials to nations like Iran - remain to be negotiated in five working groups that will convene for the first time next month.

Now, unfortunately, "we're not trying to prevent them (the North Koreans) from acquiring nuclear weapons," noted former Secretary of Defense William Perry, these days a scholar at Stanford University, "but are engaged in the more difficult task of convincing them to give up the nuclear weapons they already have and the nuclear status they already enjoy. It's a much steeper hill to climb ... We are a long way from rolling back North Korea's nuclear missiles."